Tag Archives: tomatoes

Bye bye tomatoes!!!

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IMG_1716The end of October and I’m about out of tomatoes. Very sad! For me it marks the end of the summer garden and I know that winter is around the corner. We’ve enjoyed more tomatoes this year than we ever have in the past. I grew 16 tomato plants using 5 different varieties. These varieties are the ones I”ll alway grow. Lots of cherry tomatoes, several Roma types, and then a standard tomato variety.

One evening I went out to find that a few of my cherry tomatoes had fallen to the ground. When that happens I know they’ve been on the vine too long and are over ripe. At that point I began pulling them off the vine-from the bottom-to put in the freezer for the winter. We enjoy delicious pasta sauce for months with these tomatoes. There’s little work and the taste-you would never know they were frozen. I simply don’t have the time(or money)to put all of these up for storage.

One thing I learned this year about all the different types of tomatoes: cherry tomatoes are definitely king! Folks enjoy the regular and paste type of tomatoes, but one mouthful of pure sugar from these cherry tomatoes make a believer out of anyone. Last week I offered a handful of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes to a neighbor. “I’m not a tomato fan but our son is-I’ll give them to him.” She then tasted one to make sure she didn’t like them: “Oh my! I’ve never tasted a tomato like this! What kind are these? It’s like a mini-sugar explosion in your mouth!” I think she’ll take all she can get next year.

Last point-don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t grow tomatoes in 1 square foot! I think it’s the only way to do it. [ois skin=”1″]

Square foot gardening-the cloche

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tomato clocheI’ve always enjoyed growing tomato varieties that are difficult to buy locally. Because of that I order all my tomato seeds from various seed catalogs. This particular tomato is a “sun-sugar” and it’s very sweet. Like one of my customers said: “it tastes like grapes with a slight tomato flavor!” They have been transplanted once into bigger pot makers a week ago.

But we all want to be the first person in the neighborhood to harvest tomatoes. Some folks go out and buy large tomato plants that already have the yellow blossoms on them thinking they are closer to their summer dream. And that’s all it is-a dream. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, it’s very hard to have tomatoes by the end of June in zone 6. Look around at your neighbors and you’ll find that everyone starts getting tomatoes at about the same time. Still, I planted this outside today with temperatures in the low 70’s. But the night temperatures are still a bit cool-mid 40’s with one night predicted to be 39. I could just wait for a week but I don’t want to-I thought I might try an experiment. I’ve got a lot of extra plants growing inside in case it doesn’t work.

In the square foot gardening system we teach “recycle, reduce, reuse.” Don’t throw things away. I cut the bottom off a plastic orange juice bottle to be placed over the plant to act as a cloche. By removing the cap I can prevent the inside temperature from getting to warm. The other advantage of this is we had some stronger winds today. Not only does it protect against cold but also the wind-which is especially damaging to new plants. By late afternoon I put the cap on-trapping the heat of the day inside the container for some of those cooler evening temperatures. I’ll remove the cap first thing in the morning and let it warm up. In a future post I’ll share what other things I do with this kind of bottle.

For those who may not know, I also have a Facebook page under the same name as this blog. I hope you can visit-I post different things than I do here and I’m actually more active on that than I am on the blog. I try hard to put the daily happenings of my square foot garden on Facebook while spending time on some of the more specifics with the blog. My hope is that you can visit both as they augment each other nicely[ois skin=”1″]

Much planted, much to go

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51914 gardenAfter tomorrow I’ll have a lot of newly emptied squares. To date I have a lot of the summer crops in and growing. Tomatoes, cucumbers, summer lettuce varieties, chives, carrots, chard, scallions, potatoes, nasturtium, peppers, basil, and bush beans are all in. In the next day I’ll finish planting all the rest-zucchini, patty pan and banana/butternut squash, beets, scallions, and maybe some thyme. I’ll continue to plant lettuce all summer long to make sure I have a large enough harvest by the time the tomatoes ripen. If you’re looking for a nifty little gadget to tell you what to plant and when, you ought to check this out. It’s free and easy to use. You’ll get an email periodically to remind you what to plant next. Read about it here.  Hope this helps out.

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Summer time is about here

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poc choi 50814It got here quick. Right now I’m in the process of cleaning out many squares to put in all the fun summer stuff: tomatoes(6 kinds), peppers(4 kinds), more lettuce, more leeks, more poc choi, cucumbers, beans, basil, parsley, and cantalope. By Sunday the temperature is slated to be 34 at night so I’m holding off until Monday evening to plant. I’ve got everything started and ready to be transplanted. This is Joy Choi-another delicious variety of poc choi. Not quit as big as varieties I’ve grown before but equally delicious. Watch that weather forecast. Two big news items-first: my ebook on lettuce should be out in several weeks. It’s how to grow it during the hot summer months-virtually impossible. Second: I will be writing a biography on the inventor of the square foot garden system-Mel Bartholomew. A weekend trip to San Diego is coming up for me to get this started. From the looks of it this should be a fairly good sized book. I’m thinking a year to finish it but I could be wrong. I’ve never done something like this before. What do you think about that? Let me know….

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Slowing down

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092213 prepped fall winter bedsRight now I’ve got enough lettuce, beans, tomatoes, leeks, basil, and squash to last me another 3 weeks-tops. Nights are projected to be in the mid-40’s later this week, with highs in the 70’s. My newly planted lettuce seeds are growing quickly in this cooler weather. So are all the remaining cooler crops which I’ve planted. The change in weather has really slowed the summer crops. By the picture you can get an idea of what I’ll be doing this winter in the garden. I’ve got 10 more squares to plant in the next 2-3 weeks and then I’ll be done for the year. After that it’s just a matter of protection and minimal watering for the huge winter harvest season. I doubt it will be as cold as it was last winter so I’m really looking forward to all the great things growing right now. I can’t wait until is snows so I can go and hang out in the garden-with some of the tastiest things around.

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